Established in 2005 by UC Berkeley lecturerHatem Bazian, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) is a major supporter of the pro-Hamas capus group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Several of AMP's current board members and key officials were previously members of, and worked closely with, now-defunct Islamic extremist groups that funded terrorist activities. These groups included the Islamic Association for Palestine (which, until its dissolution in 2004, served as the chief U.S. propaganda arm of Hamas); the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (which from 1995-2001 contributed approximately $12.4 million in money, goods, and services to Hamas); andKindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development (whose assets were frozen in 2006 by the U.S. Treasury Department because of its fundraising activities on behalf of Hamas). AMP is also very active on American college campuses and is one of the major driving forces of the Hamas-inspired Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel. Writes Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD): “AMP is arguably the most important sponsor and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which is the most visible arm of the BDS campaign on campuses in the United States. AMP provides speakers, training, printed materials, a so-called 'Apartheid Wall,' and [financial] grants to SJP activists. AMP even has a campus coordinator on staff whose job is to work directly with SJP and other pro-BDS campus groups across the country. According to an email it sent to subscribers, AMP spent $100,000 on campus activities in 2014 alone. AMP partners with a wide range of BDS organizations, and openly calls for Congress to embrace BDS.”

(2) Salah Sarsour (current AMP board member): In the mid-1990s, Sarsour was arrested by Israeli authorities and sentenced to eight months in prison for raising funds on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). "While in prison," reports IPT, Sarsour "became 'very good friends' with Adel Awdallah, a former leader of Hamas' al-Qassam Brigades ... He also sent money to Awdallah 'several times' through his brother Jamil Sarsour, who pleaded guilty to aiding Hamas and served a multiple year sentence in Israel before being deported to the U.S. in 2002."

(3) Sufyan Nabhan (current AMP board member): During a May 2010 event commemorating the Palestinian "Al-Nakba"—i.e., "Day of Catastrophe," in reference to the creation of Israel on May 14, 1948—Nabhan condemned Israel's "occupation of Palestine," saying: "Occupation is apartheid, occupation is segregation. Massacres are going on daily."

(4) Yousef Shahin (current AMP board member): This onetime president of the Islamic Association for Palestine's New Jersey branch has defended former British MP George Galloway, founder of Viva Palestina, against well-founded charges that the latter raised funds on behalf of Hamas. Even after Galloway himself had proudly announced in 2009 that he was giving—for purposes of "politics" and "not charity"—"three cars and £25,000 cash to [Hamas] Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh," Shahin maintained: "He's not taking money for terrorists. He's buying medical supplies for the hospital. He's not dealing with a terrorist organization. We were assured by him; he's going to give everything to the hospital." Shahin was also listed as a contact person for an AMP banquet at which Galloway was a guest speaker.

In April 2016, Jonathan Schanzer confirmed and expanded upon IPT's revelations when he reported that seven current AMP officials and/or affiliates were former members of groups that had been shut down or held civilly liable by the U.S. government for funneling money to Hamas. These included: (a) three individuals—Hossein Khatib, Jamal Said, and the aforementioned Salah Sarsour—who had previously belonged to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF); and (b) four individuals—Rafeeq Jaber, Sufian Nabhan, Abdelbasset Hamayel, and Osama Abu Irshaid—who had gravitated to AMP from the Islamic Association for Palestine and (in Hamayel's case) KindHearts. (Nabhan, Hamayel, and Abu Irshaid had also been named in the 2015 IPT report)

FDD’s research further shows that AMP’s donor list includes groups and entities whose members, affiliates, or associates maintained ties to various terrorist groups including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Qassam Brigades (Hamas's military arm), and al-Qaeda.

Notable AMP Events:

* In October 2009, AMP worked alongside the Muslim American Society to boycott and protest a speech by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the University of Chicago.

* On February 6, 2010, in collaboration with the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, AMP presented a “Palestine, Remembered!” exhibition and screened the propaganda film, Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority. Using the scurrilous Goldstone Report as a basis, organizers of this event sought to commemorate the late Rachel Corrie and other “victims of the Israeli occupation.”

* At AMP's 2011 annual conference on Palestinian activism (which was held in Chicago):

Jamal Said lauded “the activists and freedom fighters who gave up their personal ambitions and their own lives so our cause may live.”

Archbishop Atallah Hanna of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem expressed his support for the “honorable strugglers” resisting “the racist [Israeli] Occupation.”

Islamic Society of Milwaukee executive director Othman Atta claimed that “when the PLO ... Hamas, Hizballah and other groups [are] designated as terrorist groups, it is a political decision” made in deference to Israel.

* In April 2014, AMP sponsored a conference in Chicago where former IAP chairman Sabri Samirah—who had previously served as a spokesman for the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood's political party, the Islamic Action Front—told those in attendance: "We are ready to sacrifice all we have for Palestine. Long Live Palestine. We have a mission here [in the U.S.] also to support the struggle of our people back there in order to achieve a free land in the Muslim world, without dictators and without corruption." At the same AMP event, Palestinian terrorist Rasmieh Odeh, who had participated in a 1969 terrorist bombing that killed two university students in Jerusalem, was lauded as "a great community member, a great member of the Palestinian cause, a great activist for the Palestinian cause."

More About AMP:

AMP was a strictly volunteer organization until August 2008, at which time it opened its national office in Palos Heights, Ilinois. Today it consists of more than a dozen chapters in several U.S. states, and claims to be “not affiliated with any mosque or other Islamic organization.”

AMP's literature and propaganda suggests that the organization seeks nothing short of Israel's total and permanent destruction. As the Investigative Project on Terrorism notes: "AMP routinely engages in anti-Israeli rhetoric, sponsors conferences that serve as a platform for Israel bashers, and openly approves 'resistance' against the 'Zionist state.' One AMP official acknowledged the goal is to 'to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel.'" In a similar spirit, an Arabic-language poster on display in its Chicago headquarters in 2016 included the phrase, “No Jew will live among them in Jerusalem.”

Notwithstanding its numerous ties to jihadist organizations and its countenance of their eliminationist rhetoric, AMP—claiming that Islam and the Quran passionately celebrate “the tenets of justice and equality” as well as “the vast and rich diversity that exists among the global human family”—professes to “firmly stan[d] against all forms of bigotry and racism.”

AMP's stated mission is to educate the public about: “the just cause of Palestine and the rights of self-determination, liberty and justice”; “how the people of Palestine have been living … for decades” under an Israeili “occupation” characterized by “flagrant and continual violations of international law and human rights abuses”; how American “tax dollars support the longest-lasting ... military occupation in modern history”; and how Israel's construction of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem not only “violate[s] international law,” but serves “as a vehicle for ethnic cleansing” whereby the Jewish state can “annex more Palestinian land illegally and ... isolate Palestinian communities into cantons and Bantustans, much like Apartheid South Africa.” To address these grievances, AMP demands that Congress “change [American] foreign policy in the Middle East to one that is more balanced and just for everyone living in the Holy Land.”

2) The Al-Nakba Campaign, which seeks to draw public attention to Israel's alleged historical transgressions, is rooted in AMP's belief that May 14, 1948—the day on which the state of Israel was created—was “the beginning of al-Nakba,” or “the Catastrophe,” for the Palestinian people. Proceeding from that premise, AMP explains that the Palestinian Intifadas of 1987 and 2000—whose hallmarks were relentless waves of murderous terrorism—were legitimate “uprisings against Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” Moreover, AMP's Al-Nakba Campaign “unequivocally supports” the Palestinian “Right of Return” to Israel—not only for the relatively few remaining survivors who were among the 725,000 original Arab refugees who fled Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, but also for their 5 million-plus descendants. To AMP, this is an “individual right enshrined in international law.” For details on the Right of Return and its implications for Israel's survival as a nation, click here.